Having Fun Creating Stock Images

Sometimes you just have to have some fun making images...the driving force behind this nuclear armageddon image.

Fun And A Mushroom Cloud of Flame

Every once-in-a-while you have to just have some fun. That is what I did with this image of a fiery mushroom cloud of flame rising up from behind the silhouette of a city skyline. Of course, I still intend to make money with this image, though I hardly expect it to be a best seller. Because the image is not something that there are many uses for I am pegging it as a Rights Managed image…though as I submitted it to the Getty House collection it may yet end up as an RF image.

A Metropolis Skyline Silhouette

The image began as a skyline shot of New York. I pen tooled (created a clipping path) of the buildings, created a selection and created a new layer. I used the hue and saturation control to create the silhouette by bringing the lightness slider all the way down. I wanted the city to be a more generic metropolis so I added more buildings from a San Francisco skyline shot to create the final city skyline. Next I experimented with different sunset and sunrise images behind the skyline finally settling on a sunrise shot from Mexico.

A Sunrise And A Nuclear Explosion

It was while I was playing with the sunrises behind the city silhouette that the idea came to me for the “nuclear explosion” image. One particular fiery sunrise image looked as if the city was back lit from and explosion or fire. I went to my archives for flame shots…I had some fireballs from my time at burning man…and was able to fashion them into the mushroom cloud explosion.

Cropping Flexibility And Copy Space

As usual I made the image to have cropping flexibility and room for headlines and copy.  When making stock images I believe it is better error on the side of extra room for art directors and designers to use than to make tighter crops that might be a bit more esthetically pleasing.

Creativity, Science Fiction And Getting Seen

I can see this photo being used as a book cover for a science fiction thriller, or perhaps for a sensationalistic editorial on the danger of nukes or terrorist attacks. Certainly the image can serve to illustrate concepts such as "armageddon, nuclear holocaust, and the end of the world. With stock images you just never know when an art director or designer will come up with some really creative way to use your work.  Of course, the biggest challenge, as always, is getting your work seen by those creatives.

Closing The Barn Door After The Horse Is Gone

A man closes the barn door after the horse is gone in this concept stock photo about prevention, timeliness and procrastination.

Shutting The Barn Door After The Horse Is Gone

After thinking about it for about two years, I finally got around to taking some photos of a friend, Pippa Murray, while she worked her horse.  I spent about an hour shooting while she was being coached on jumping her horse, and getting some pretty good material for my stock imagery in the process.  As usual, when I shoot for stock, I went in with a shot list that included “shutting barn door after the horse is gone”. As Pippa was prepping and grooming her horse Bella, I had Stephanie, my partner, grab a quick shot of me pretending to pull the sliding barn door shut.

Building My Image In Photoshop

Back in my studio I went over my material, picked one of the “door shutting” images and brought it into Photoshop. I used the pen tool to create a clipping path on the inside of the barn door opening. I excluded both myself, and the barn doors, from the clipping path. I then made a selection with the clipping path using a one-pixel feather, inverted it, and used the selection to create a new layer. This gave me a layer that included everything except the background. Going back to the original background layer I applied a layer mask “reveal all”. After creating a new background (bottom) layer of white, I used a large soft brush to fade away the original background layer making the image look as if the scene outside the barn were overexposed and “blown out”. The next step was to add the horse.

Should Have Brought That Shot List!

Naturally, when shooting Pippa riding her horse I neglected to shoot specifically for my barn door image (should have brought my shot list and checked it off…so lazy!), so I had to improvise. I did get a few images of her and Bella clearing jumps from behind…but only a very few. Those images stood out though because when jumping the horses’ rear hooves, in their highest position, gave the animal a lot more sense of action and added a bit more of a humorous feeling. The only problems were that the horses’ front two legs were obscured by the jump, and Pippa’s leg and saddle obscured a lot of the horse’s side. It took about three hours of work to make the horse look the way I needed it to look by cloning, copying and pasting and so forth.

Qualities Of A Successful Stock Image

One never knows if an image is going to sell in stock, let alone do well, but I believe this photo has a lot of the qualities that make for a successful stock image. First of all, I think it is a concept that can apply to a lot of messages. The idea is one of prevention and of timeliness. “Have You Backed Up Your Data” could easily be a headline that would go with this photo of an escaping horse…after the barn doors are being closed. In fact, there are a ton of businesses, services and products that are designed to help us prevent bad things from happening or help us deal with such events including everything from firewalls to insurance to training. In addition, prevention is a difficult concept to illustrate making this image one with less competition. The potential is there for a good selling image.

Humor Is A Plus

Humor is also a plus for this shot. Any time you can inject a little humor into an image you dramatically increase it’s chance for sales. The humor here is a little subtle, but I think it is hard to avoid smiling when you see the photo. The semi-silhouette lighting adds both drama and plenty black areas providing copy space for headlines and text, and the image is easily cropped square, vertical or horizontal.

Rights Managed or Royalty Free?

I wrestled with whether this should be a Rights Managed or Royalty Free image, but finally went with Royalty Free because I think the shot can be used to advertise so many different products and services and for a lot of editorial uses as well. With this image I am counting on the large market of Royalty Free users will pay off more than the SOMETIMES higher fees of Rights Managed. Time will tell!

Succeeding In Stock Photography

The stock photography business has become a roller coaster of ups an downs, but some photographers are still doing well.

Poor Sales And Pulling Imagery

I just read a post on a forum in which a photographer complained about his sales (or lack of sales) at Alamy and is going to pull all of his imagery. Everywhere one turns photographers are decrying the state of the industry. I can’t even count how many photographers I have heard give up on Getty and Corbis. Even microstock photographers are hating on iStock (formerly iStockphoto) and Shutterstock. There is no doubt that these are challenging times in the stock photo industry, but I think it is important to keep in mind that the ones we hear from most are the ones who are having a hard time. The shooters who are experiencing success are for the most part eschewing the forums to…drum roll…make images!

Photographers Succeeding In Stock

There are photographers who are succeeding in stock.  So while that one unnamed photographer is pulling his imagery from Alamy, Jon Boyes has found a formula for making Alamy pay well…and is experiencing increasing sales.   Cristian Baitg is finding success with iStock. Others I know are growing their sales at Getty (I can’t speak to Corbis as I don’t personally know anyone who is an active Corbis contributor). Even the upstart agency Stocksy, with just a few months under its belt, is claiming that several of their photographers are making good livings (though I would sure love to know exactly what that means….). I am also aware of many Blend Images photographers who are doing well.

Making Stock Photography Work

My point is that we photographers can still make stock work for us, but need to understand what model suits our particular abilities and style. Jon Boyes, for example, has the patience and discipline to understand and make the most of key wording at Alamy.  Cristian Baitg knows what works, and how to shoot it, for the micro model. 

Rights Managed, Royalty Free, Microstock And Roller Coasters

I hear photographers say their RM imagery is doing well but that they are giving up on RF…and I also hear the exact opposite. I know at least one photographer who has given up on Getty to shoot microstock! I personally am experiencing what I am sure many other shooters are…a roller coaster of up and down months. One month I think things have turned the corner and the future is rosy, the next I have to grit my teeth and not let a disappointing sales report interrupt my productivity. When you hear the sky is falling, take it with a grain of salt and learn as much as you can about your own situation and what will work for you.

Understand Your Distribution

To succeed in stock photography these days it certainly helps to understand which agencies offer what. Getty, for example, is still the 600 lb. Gorilla, but is not offering much in the way of individual art direction. Blend Images (disclaimer…I am a part owner of Blend), as another example, offers vast distribution and individual art direction.  Shutterstock boasts a huge customer base, but certainly isn’t right for my style of imagery…at least not “as right” as Getty or Blend. On top of everything else agencies are going public, venture capital is coming in, and agencies are jockeying for position with renewed vigor. Change is afoot and it may be very important to pay attention to it!

What To Shoot, How To Shoot And How To Distribute

Each of use needs to really understand what to shoot, how to take advantage of our own skill sets and shooting styles, and which distribution channels work best our own circumstances. If we can understand those things we can still thrive in stock photography...it just isn't easy.

The Power Of Working With A Stock Agency

A bridge to  nowhere, or the way forward to opportunity? This concept stock photo is the result of a collaboration between the photographer and his stock agency.

A Rickety Bridge, Concept Photos And A “Supply Chain”

A couple of weeks ago Blend Images asked me to work on some concept stock photos. One concept they asked me to undertake was that of “Supply Chain”. As I thought about what I could create to illustrate that concept this bridge image that I had captured on a trip to Myanmar sprung to mind.  I liked that the bridge was rickety and near failing and could represent the adversity and challenges that face most supply chains.

A Bridge In Need Of A Location

I went through my archives and found the image. The existing background was very uninteresting so I decided to strip the footbridge out and put it in a much more dramatic setting.  I decided to create a clipping path using the pen tool and have the isolated bridge on a separate layer. Then I could simply try differing backgrounds till I found the one that worked the best. It took me about an hour, give or take a few minutes, to create the clipping path and put the bridge on it’s own layer.

Fog Banks, Cloudscapes

I went back to my archives in search of just the right background. It didn’t take me long to realize that having the bridge simply disappear into a cloudbank would be great. I used a combination of San Francisco Fog banks and high-altitude cloudscapes to create my ideal scenario.  The whole effort from clipping path to finished image only took a few hours. I was pretty excited with the image, which I realized had a compelling drama as well as enough flexibility to apply to a wide range of concepts.

This version of the footbridge was before my agency art director suggested adding a person, and while it is still a great image, adding a person takes it t hat extra step.

Editing And A New Direction

Next I sent a low -resolution jpeg to my art director, Jim Dougherty, at Blend. He quickly replied that I should try adding a person to the image, perhaps a figure crossing the bridge.  Looking back it seems like an obvious option, and yet without the input of my editor I wouldn’t have tried it...I was pretty darn happy with the image the way it was. In fact, when Jim first suggested that I try it I was a bit doubtful. I figure it might actually limit the sales opportunities...I really like how the bridge without a figure seemed so open to a wide range of concepts. But one thing I have learned from thirty years of being a professional photographer is that I don’t have all the answers.

Crossing The Bridge

The next morning I went in to the studio, set my camera up on the camera stand and used the self- timer to photograph myself in a variety of standing and walking positions. I ended up silhouetting myself out in three different positions. I began with having the model (me) just about to enter the fog bank, and then I began trying different scenarios. None of them were really working for me. Finally, I just added myself in the foreground to look as if I am contemplating an attempt at crossing the bridge. That was it!

Rights Managed, Or Royalty Free

Originally I was thinking this would be a Rights Managed image. A lot of work went into it...a full day of photography and imaging not even counting the original bridge image shot in Myanmar. And yet, I could see so many potential uses from the risks and dangers of “Cloud Computing” to such tried and true concepts as “The Way Forward”, The Future, and “Journey’s”.  Add to that the fact that as an RF image I can also include the original bridge photo sans model, and I decided to go Royalty Free.

Working With An Agency And The Big Picture

This is just one example of how working closely with an agency can pay off. Every photographer works differently with their editor or art director, but however one works with them, it is important to take advantage of their knowledge. As photographers we see only a very small part of the big picture. Art Directors such as Jim have the advantage of knowing what the gaps and needs of the agency collection are as well as having access to a ton of market research. They see the work coming in from numerous other photographers as well, which helps them understand where an individual photographer can fit in and maximize their own strengths.

Honing In On Market Needs And Fine Tuning Photography

As stock photography continues to get increasingly competitive it becomes ever more important for photographers to hone in on the needs of the market and to minimize wasted efforts that are duplicating existing work or aimed at non-existent needs. Working closely with an agency can help photographers make the most of their time and resources and help them fine-tune their photography to make it the most effective it can be.

Converting Social Media Efforts Into Photo Revenue

As we all start to drown under the demands of social media it is important to consider how we spend our limited time.

Converting Social Media Efforts Into Photo Revenue

Wow, I haven’t written a blog post in over a month! As a matter of fact, I haven’t been on Google + more than two or three times in that period, have barely glanced at Facebook, and have all but abandoned my nightly perusing of Google Analytics. I haven’t looked at Pinterest in over a month, nor have I kept up with Tumbler. A few perfunctory tweets on twitter rounds out my social media activities. Taking note of this, I realized that I have found a way to convert my Social Media efforts into more revenue. I am doing that by spending less time on social media and more time doing what I really love doing, making more images. Between Getty and Blend I have uploaded fifty of my composited concept images and uploaded another 45 “accepted” images shot as part of a joint shoot with a friend of mine. This has been the most productive month I have ever had. So while my headline maybe be a little misleading I think it is important for those who are serious about stock photography to carefully consider how they use their time.

Cutting Down On Wasted Time

For the last several years I have been working at getting more efficient, more disciplined and more productive. That isn’t necessarily the same thing as spending less money on shoots because in what I do time is my biggest constraint, not the cost of the shoot. My emphasis has been on efficient use of my time and I have found a couple ways that are really helping me in that goal.

Next Image Up

My latest technique for increasing my productivity is to have my next image already planned before I finish the current one. I am now spending a little time each day planning out the next image and what individual steps need to be done towards completion of the image whether it is finding a photo from my archives, shooting a prop, or casting models.

First Task The Next Morning

Whether I am about to begin a new image or hopefully complete one in progress, I find it immensely helpful to plan the first task to undertake the next morning. I can’t stress enough how important this seems to be to jump right into a good creative/work flow each morning.  Getting a good productive start in the morning seems to almost always carry right on through for the entire day.  So the last thing I do before I leave the studio is review what I will start on first thing the next the morning.

Committing To Ideas

The other part of my increased productivity is in committing to ideas.  I always have a list of ideas to work on, but now I commit to the next one before I finish the one I am working on. Now it doesn’t always play out that way. I also allow myself to jump into images that present themselves to me during the course of my work. For example, as I peruse through my files looking for parts I need an idea will often spring to mind. If I finish an image and it is fairly early in the day I might then jump on such an idea and try and whip it out before starting on my next “major” idea. But again, the important thing is that I have an image already mapped out and ready to dive into.

Breaks, Exercise and "Off" Time
I do take occasional breaks to exercise and to surf the net. Giving myself permission for brief sorties outside my “production zone” insures that I don’t get burned out…which would really negatively affect my output! I might also add that I often take a day out of my work week to work around the house and I take several trips each year with at least one being a major one usually to some exotic destination. Giving myself plenty of "off" time keeps  me at my best when I am working.

Quality, Quantity And Consistency

A reminder here that the one trait I can see that is shared by all the top earning stock photographers that I know is that they all are prolific photographers. They combine quality, quantity and consistency. That is the overriding goal I find myself working towards these days. If I can achieve that then I believe the money will take care of itself...and so far it seems to be working.

Gold At The End Of The Stock Photo Rainbow

There is gold at the end of the stock photo rainbow for those who approach their shooting with discipline and thought.

My Top 100 Images For 2012

I recently took a very close look at my stock photo sales for 2012. One of the more interesting things was that of my top 100 selling images, thirty percent (well, okay, it was actually 29%) of them were created before 2005 (which is as far back as I have been keeping track of sales). That seems pretty significant to me. That figure includes my sales from Blend Images, Getty and Corbis.

Endless E+ Images And Search Algorithms

That high number of long-in-tooth images seems even more impressive when I look at the seemingly endless number of E+ images that fill page after page of search results on the Getty site. With so many images competing for search slots how the heck does anyone ever see any of my images?  The answer has to be that the search algorithms Getty and others use do take into account an images’ sales history, and possibly even the photographer’s body of work as well. It sure would be nice if we could see behind the curtain once-in-a-while whether or not it would help with our sales!

Market Needs And Production Value

So what can we individual photographers do to make those algorithms work for us? Well, there really isn’t a whole lot we can do, which makes it that much more important to focus in on those things we can do. Certainly it is obvious that the more quality we put into our images the better off we will be. In this case quality can be production value as well as relevance to market needs. Actually, making sure your image is something the market needs probably is even more important than high production value! The trick here is to not let your perception of what the market needs inhibit your creativity. I believe it is also vitally important to edit really tightly and not water-down the over all quality of your body of work.

Improving Agency Sales

Another thing we can do is get our imagery up on our web sites with links to work on the agency sites. I get around twenty visitors a day that find my work via the Internet and then click on through to whatever agency is handling the image they have found. While I can’t track what percentage of those visitors actually license images some of them do, and when they do it is a double bonus because the image they license moves up in importance.  When you think about it, having a website that can help drive traffic to your images, even on agency sites, is one of the few things we can actually do to improve our agency sales. In fact, I am currently having my own site “tuned-up” to provide, hopefully, a better user experience as well as better SEO. Should have that up in about a week or two.

Success In Stock Photography

I really believe that success in stock photography necessitates images that have a long life span. So my mantra is creating photos that are relevant to the market, have a high production value, and resist becoming dated.  My own recipe for success also includes diversifying my images as much as I can (the limiting factor being that it has to be something I enjoy creating) and diversifying in terms of agency distribution.

Gold At The End Of The Rainbow

If there is gold at the end of the stock photo rainbow (you knew I had to work that in), the only way to get there is by having the discipline to create new work necessary to ensure maximum visibility.

SEO Advice for Photographers

If you want to be found on the Internet by people searching for photographers then good SEO is essential!

Google, (or any search engine) is looking for the best site to send to a searcher.   So, of course, if you want to get on the first page of the search engine results you site has to convince Google or whatever search engine is being used that your site is the best or at least close to the best.

Google doesn't rely on just your website, but also looks at the links on other websites that point to your site. For instance, if someone searches for "photographer" then Google goes and looks through its database and finds websites that are related to "photographer".  Let's say Google finds 10 sites that are tied for 1st place.  All ten are really good sites. To break the tie, Google will look at how many links are pointed to the sites, what the links say, and where the links come from and it will assign a score for those links.  The links from the most important websites will count the most. Links from unrelated sites are worth almost nothing.

There isn't much you can do about the links from other sites. Unless you are buddies with the owner or something you most likely will not be able to have the links say what you would like them to say.  You would like them to contain the keyword phrases you are trying to get a good ranking for.

The only place where you have control is on your own site. Once you have a "perfect" site, (search engine wise), then you need those good links.  If your website is really good, other sites with related content will link to it. But again, all you can do is make the best site you can and let the links happen!

So let's see what you can do about your own site. Google looks at 200 variables to makes its decision on where to rank your site. This includes things like spelling and grammar; good sites don't have a lot of miss-spelled words and/or poor grammar.  It checks to see how many pages the site has, how many of those pages are related to the keyword phrase being searched for, what the keyword density is, what kinds of ads if any are on the page, how cluttered the page is, etc.  Nobody (outside of Google) knows for sure what the 200 variables are and how they are rated. 

You can have a great website, but unless you tell Google about it you still won't rank well. For good SEO, all you can do is make sure your site is really good, is easy to use for humans, and can communicate that to Google.

If I was Google, I would first look at the title of the website.  If I were looking for a photographer for a book cover, I would not bother with a website that had the title: History of Mesopotamia.   However, if I spotted a website titled " John Lund, Professional Photographer, Sausalito, California, then that might be worth taking a look at. The search engines will look to see how often "photographer" is used on each page, and if your site has the word on 3 pages but someone else has it mentioned on 48 pages then they will probably get better results than you.  But that is just one variable of 200...

If a keyword phrase is in the title, it should be in the text of the page at least once. Each page on your site is a chance to optimize for a keyword phrase, maybe two, but not more than that.  It should be good reading for a human. So you might have a page related to "business photos", and one titled "Financial Concept Photos" and one "Photoshop Composite Photos" etc.  If you have lots of pages, each optimized for a phrase or two, Google begins to think maybe you are an expert.  That gives you better ranking.

When you look at the source code of your page you will see near the top of the page something like this:

That is the title tag and is in the "Head portion of the page".  In other words it has to be between the tags and also in the head portion will be the description tag... put it under the title tag:

.

Pictures have an alt tag you use to tell people who can't see the picture what it is about.  Google reads it.  It's for blind people and people that have text only browsers etc.  Put a good detailed description of the photo in the alt tags.

Typical alt tag (for the picture at the top of this blog):

alt="A woman executive stands at the top of a lighthouse in an urban setting scanning the horizon for opportunities and risks in the world of business and finance."

HTML has something called headings. H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6

H1 is the most important heading. Use it only once on a page.  Google thinks it’s more important than regular text. H2 is next in importance... you can use it once or twice under an H1 tag. H3 and lower you can use lots of if you want to. But they are for headings of paragraphs, nothing else. If you are going to work on your site I would suggest you take a few online tutorials about HTML.

So, as far as SEO goes...

Make as many pages as you can about different aspects of your business.

Include as much text as you can on each page... between 250 and 500 words is good.

Put the keyword phrases in your title, alt tags, body text, use headings with the phrases in your body text, and don't use the phrase too often.  Usually 1 to 3 times in the body text is good. 10 times is too many for 250 to 500 words.

Google has to spider your site before it can index and then rank it.  So be sure there are links on your pages that Google can read so it will know about all your pages, or make a sitemap to tell Google what pages you have.

Join Google's Webmaster Tools.  It tells you everything you need to know about how to rank well at Google.

Use Google analytics.

And there you have it, my webmaster's sage advice on SEO for photographers…have fun!